


three rounds and a sound

by sayonide



Series: 3 rounds and a sound [10]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Just to be safe, Pre-Canon, as far as i remember, gotta have some soft for her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27817075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayonide/pseuds/sayonide
Summary: Ilia's 8 years old, and her family's pretty awesome, until she's 8 years old and they're dead.She's 18 before she finds them again.
Series: 3 rounds and a sound [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2002933
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	three rounds and a sound

**Author's Note:**

> if i forgot any tags. please tell me because its literally 3 am and i dont know how to tag appropriately 
> 
> the i/r abuse tag is there because some parts overlap with the fog of what is right, and also it's pretty hard to misinterpret their relationship as Not Toxic
> 
> anyway, have more ilia content

_3_

"Just like that!" He praises, and Ilia beams from where she's standing, a slingshot in hand and a small pile of rocks next to her. He brushes his tail against her head as he heads forward to pick up the can that she's managed to nearly punch a hole through, and she bounces on the spot in wait. When he gets back, she bounces in place and shakes the empty slingshot furiously. 

"Can I try again? That was so cool, I wanna do it again! I'm gonna be as good as you are! I'm gonna be better!"

Her dad chuckles, but reaches down and gently pulls the slingshot from her grip. "You're going to be incredible, Ilia," he tells her when she whines. "But remember, this is a last resort defence. Do you remember what I taught you yesterday?"

Ilia lets out a full body sigh. "Yes! But what if they're being really, really, _really_ mean? And then if I use the slingy then they _won't_ be mean anymore! And if they're not mean then there's no problem so I solved the problem fast like you always tell me to!"

He pats her on the back good naturedly, and gently scolds her. "You can't rely on violence to solve your problems. Sometimes, just a gentle reminder or a harmless show of strength is all you need."

"'Kay," she mutters. A second later, though, she bounces right back up to grin at him. "But I can shoot the can again, right? Just one more hit? Please?"

"...Ilia, I'm not sure you underst-"

"Pleease?" She whines, and he hesitates, giving her an opening to latch onto. "Just one more time I wanna hit the can one more time!"

A moment passes, before he bends down and sighs, handing the slingshot back. "One more time," he promises. "Then we're heading back home."

When they dismantle the small pile of rocks and leave, on the walk back he nudges her and winks, rolling a flat rock around his knuckles. "Same time next week?" 

Ilia beams up at him and nods. Two days later, an explosion collapses a sector of the mine he works in, taking her parents and hundreds of other faunus workers.

* * *

_2_

They're 12 years old when they meet Adam. Ilia's got no home or parents outside of the Belladonna's, and she's too stuck on her _actual_ parents, too worried about moving on too fast and hurting the memory of them. She can't go to school, can't really do anything but climb trees and practice the bit of self defence her dad taught her.

So when Blake pulls her out of the crowd during one of their rallies to sneak around to a smaller, hidden area to meet some older guy, she follows. What else is there to do? 

When they get there, Blake hands over their signs with an excitement that it shouldn't warrant to a taller boy, with dark brown hair and a bandanna wrapped around his head like an eyepatch. He smiles at her, nods, and reaches back to hand the both of them different signs. 

At first glance, it doesn't really look too different from their old ones. When she peers closer, though, Ilia realized. The image on it, their symbol, is changed. It's rougher, worn down, and the wolf is _snarling_. Claw marks that she'd immediately brushed off as merely a handling accident weren't carved into the wood, but carefully brushed on in the background. 

She looks up to the boy, before turning to Blake, who smiles down at her reassuringly. "We're just doing a bit more," she says to Ilia. "Things that the older parts of the Fang's too stubborn to change."

"Sienna's got a plan," the boy cuts in. "We've been doing these peaceful protests since _forever_ , and nothing's changed. But Sienna's got a plan to change it properly. If the humans won't listen, we'll _make_ them."

Ilia turns back to blink at him, before looking at Blake, only to find her friend enthusiastically nodding along. Seemingly sensing her stare, Blake tilts her head to look back at Ilia. "Adam's leading our group. It's pretty small right now, but you'll see. We'll get results this way so much faster that before."

"Aren't you tired of waiting around for the humans to give us our rights? Why do we have to wait? Why can't we take our rights when we want them, instead of relying on them to show some pity for us animals?"

She glances back and forth between the two. They can't just leave behind the original cause of the White Fang like that, right? But... Blake's never lead her wrong before. And they have a point. Her parents had died because of bad safety protocols and not enough laws helping the faunus, and nearly 5 years later, nothing's changed. 

What's the harm? 

So she turns back to the boy -- Adam -- and nods, gripping her new sign. He smiles at her, extends his hand to shake, and she tries to ignore the voice telling her that it's a horrible idea. It's fine. It'll be fine. At the very least, she owes it to her parents to do whatever she can to get their cause recognized and given the voice it deserves.

He leads them down the street, and as their small group of teens rushes forward to smash the windows of a local store, she remembers her dad. His voice, during their weekly outings, reminding her that _you can't rely on violence to solve your problems_ , and tells herself that it's a last resort. They tried peace. It didn't work. This was for the greater good. 

* * *

_1_

"What the fuck do you mean she left?"

Somehow, his quiet anger scares her more than if he started screaming and throwing tables, but that shouldn't surprise her. She'd seen the results of this anger, but she'd also seen the power he'd tried to hide every time Blake had flinched at him.

So when he stalks up to her, she resolves to not let him intimidate her the way he did to every human in his path and her best friend. But it's hard. It's really, really hard, and she's not even 16 years old, trying to face down a man almost a decade older than her, with his hair dyed bright red so his horns stick out like he's just daring her to stand up to him. His messy bandana's been replaced with a mask that he duplicates and hands out like a trophy, marking him as the monster that the humans want to turn them into like it's something to be proud of.

In short, he's fucking terrifying. And he knows it. 

"Why did you just let her go, then? You're supposed to be good at tracking people, Ilia. So where did she go?"

She takes as quiet a breath as she can, and stares him squarely in the... mask. "She's better than me, and you know it. I can't track someone who knows all the clues to follow."

He growls, low, under his breath, and thuds the table once before giving her a quick nod. "You better hope you get better then," he says, and she almost salutes out of fear, but takes the dismissal as what it is and leaves. 

When she's outside, she lets out a slow sigh of relief. The moon shines bright overhead, and she knows it's stupid. But she looks up at the chunks, hopes that the Gods are up there, and prays for the first time in her life that Blake made it out. 

The next morning, Adam calls for a search party. "We can't lose our best tracker," he reasons. They all know the real reason, but as half the camp spreads out to search, she realizes that they don't _care_. They can't care less about what he wants to do after they find her; everyone just wants to give him back his _property_ and go back to waiting for the negotiations to be over.

And, well. Second best or not, she can't stop an entire camp. Before night falls, Adam walks back into camp, dragging Blake behind him. 

It's funny, then, how despite everything she's told herself about not being scared of him, she manages to stand her ground only when it doesn't matter. 

This? This matters. But she stays there, frozen in fear, and watches as he leads Blake into the tent.

A thud sounds from inside, and Ilia's a _coward,_ she can admit that now, because she turns and runs. She runs back to her tent, ducks inside and past the small row of faunus pressed up in the same space as her, and tells herself to forget about Blake. For _Blake's_ safety, she tells herself. She shuts her eyes firmly, and pretends that if she just stays away, they'll both be safe, and the White Fang will go back to the organization for change that they were promised.

* * *

_0_

This was it. Her last chance. A miraculous one, at that; they had no reason to let her help. Nothing that could convince them that she should be there, and that she'd be on their side.

And yet. Here she was, scaling the side of Haven Academy for the second time in a week, disabling every single bomb she'd placed up there under Adam's orders. Down below, the sounds of fighting was evident, right alongside the whirring of the airships drifting behind her.

When she hits the top of the academy, where the last bomb is placed, she drops back down onto the ground with the last of the stash. As she gives the airships the signal, she wonders what would happen if she'd failed to deactivate one of them, or had forgotten a bomb that's still up on the roof somewhere.

Adam gives the signal, tries to set the bombs off, and a tense moment follows where Ilia panics, wonders if she'd failed somewhere, if she'd accidentally betrayed everyone out of simply being an _idiot_ , and the courtyard is silent.

The courtyard. It's silent.

He twists to stare at the academy in confusion, and Ilia -- it's not in their plan, she's going way off script but she needs to do this -- steps out from the shadows, lets the darkness melt away to her base colours. 

Six, nearly seven years of being stuck behind him. It was almost worth it, for this moment. To see his face go blank, the sheer shock of the fact that _anyone_ would try to betray him again, and then the ripple of panic when everyone scatters.

She enjoys it almost too much. 

But afterwards, he's gone. Ran off to hide somewhere, followed by some of the villagers they'd recruited in Menagerie, and Ilia stays with the Belladonnas to figure out what the _fuck_ was happening inside the academy while everything had been going on outside, and why some dude had been thrown clean through a wall. 

It's almost concluded by the time the three of them get inside, and Blake and her team are curled in on the side, a bunch of people she doesn't know in various states of exhaustion, a godsdamned raven hopping around outside that she almost trips over, and she realizes that there's nowhere to go.

It doesn't quite sink in the first time. Not in the middle of Haven, when her best friend is with the team she'd never stopped talking about and everyone is in relatively good shape. When she waves goodbye and follows Ghira and Kali to where the rest of them are going to stay, though, it nearly crushes her.

She has _nowhere to go_. Her parents are dead, Adam's version of the Fang was disbanded, and the new version couldn't accept her after what she'd done. 

Ilia nearly turns completely black at the thought, instinctively trying to fade into the darkness. She succeeds at holding it back -- instead of going full black, she turns a dirty shade of grey, and Kali pauses to look over at her.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

It's familiar. Warm. Ilia considers lying, or ignoring her, and manages to make herself take another step forward when a hand lands on her shoulder.

Maybe it's pathetic, that spending that long without touching anyone outside of combat makes her this emotional. In the moment, though, she instinctively leans into the touch, no different than how she remembers from all those years ago, and it's unfairly hard to lie to her.

"Where am I supposed to go?" She asks, and she almost thanks living in the White Fang for how easily she hides the fear, even now, but Kali just smiles.

"Well, if you have nowhere to go, why not come with us?"

Ilia blinks up at how simple it was said, and then realizes. "Right. I'm the best stealth unit you got, 'cause I guess Blake's going to go off with the others after this."

Still, Kali smiles at her, shaking her head a little bit in amusement. "Well, sure," she says. "But we've got six years of catching up to do. I'd like to know how our second daughter was in that time, too."

Oh.

 _Oh_.

She chokes back some tears at the thought, and the smiles slips a little bit. "Unless... Catching up with an old friend is just as good, Ilia."

No. No way. Ilia shakes her head hard, and pushes out, "Daughter's good. It's... It's more than good. I'd be- honoured, honestly. If you think of me as... As that. After everything."

Kali's smile comes back full-force, and she stops her husband for a second, reaching forward to wrap Ilia into a hug. "Of course we will. I'm so proud of who you are today. And I know your parents are, too."

She presses her head into Kali's shoulder, tries to push back the tears, and nearly melts when Ghira comes to wrap his arms around them as well. 

"Thank you," she mumbles. "Thank you, so much."

**Author's Note:**

> ignore my note about what time it is here. go check the time, stretch, drink some water, and rest. your mental health is above whatever you're cramming for. it's ok to take breaks.
> 
> some notes:  
> 1) i didn't really want to rewatch the v5 scene but have forgotten how adam was going to detonate haven so if it's not totally canon compliant that's why  
> 2) look i know i have a multichap but i have absolutely no chapters written in advance or even a solid plotline other than "ruby really wants cookies" and "adam bastard taurus" so if anyone's reading that. sorry lmao  
> 3) ilia's dad's tail is a raccoon tail fun fact! i asked kiwi for two random animals and got "raccoon and parrot." wasn't able to incorporate her mom's parrot trait, but i'm using that as my canon now


End file.
